I have to trust anything named da Vinci. It's in my blood or something. Thanks to Rapp for echoing my immortal prose here from there. It's not that I don't care about Mom, it's just I get addlepated and don't realize how long its been since I visited her sacred temple. Imagine! A whole page of Mom posts without my name on it. It's disgraceful, as The Orange One would say. Also, "No collusion!". Don't get me started.

Seriously, I have been on a clinical trial routine of chemotherapy combining cisplatin and gemcitabine (something like that) with a an immune system stimulant designed to make the body's own immune system recognize cancer cells and take them out. Anything to help move science forward, especially when so many are trying to move it backwards. Spare me from idiocy. So now, with the chemo behind me, they want to take the bladder out altogether to ensure no sneaky cancer cells pop back into play. Such tsuris. Surgery is on the 8th instant. Will advise.

I have just returned from a loverly weekend in the wilding hills of West Virginia where a clan of song-loving folkies gather to spend the days and evenings swapping songs at a rustic inn called The Brazen Head. A long long drive. But well worth it for the chance to get my fix of people in song. :D

On the 8th of May I will be delving into the unknown as the amazing technology of modern medicine again converges on my mortal shell to tweak and remodel it. This time it will be a robotic surgeon with six arms which will be moving in through six very small incisions to remove my trusty bladder and some auxiliary bits including the seminal vesicles and prostate gland, so that when I awake I will have to re-learn the rare art of urination all anew, but this time en plastique. As far as I can recall I was an average student of micturition in my first training on the course back in the 1940's, and improved steadily to the point where I could write my name in the snow. I am not sure how well that will work with this new system, but the nurse who was trying to coach me on what to expect reassured me cheerfully that I would still be able to point the stream. Preserve the small pleasures, that's what I say.

Ralphy's and Mikey's painting, especially that ceiling, are going to be given to the Society for the Preservation and Continuation of Absurd and Silly Uses of Paint (SPCASUP). That one part, of Adam getting the finger from Big Daddy, has been painted over. But you mentioned the storm one in particular -- you'll be pleased to know that trench coats, rubber boots, and umbrellas were painted onto is a few years ago so that children wouldn't worry that the subjects were going to catch cold.

Oh, Mom!!! Mere minutes from oblivion! Yes, oblivion. O-B-L-I-V-I-O-N. Here, let me save you from that. That's nice, now give me the other bottle. And the one you have hidden. There now! You've avoided the oblivion and false haven the alcohol provides! Here's a nice, huge, espresso. Drink it all down, now. GOOOOOD GIRL!

Oh, I'm okay now. It was touch-and-go for a few hours, me hovering just outside Death's Door with one foot inside, the hearse waiting outside with the black plumed horses, but all the tests and EKGs came back normal so I decided to go home instead. It shows what an indomitable will can do!

NB: Don't fool around with the non-medical, oily, nitroglycerine. It is not something for make at home or even in your high school's chemistry lab. Trust me on this.

What were you and MOM doing that set you off? And I hope Pat made sure the car shock absorbers were in good shape for the drive home. I remember an episode of Death Valley Days or maybe Rawhide when they had to transport nitro glycerin. It was a real nail-biter.

Mom gave up giving any other thread a run for its money about 40,000 posts back. I distinctly remember her saying, "Screw it. Life's too short. I ain't racin' anybody. I'll whomp their (posterior parts) just by ambling along."

Window blinds that have one blind rise and take a peek exposing menacing eyes at various intervals is as effective as the sound of a shot gun being cocked from the signal of a motion detector on the porch.

There's a place (chain) called Five Guys that has pretty good burgers - the standard size is difficult to fit into a normal human mouth. There are some local one-off hamburger joints that I prefer if I haven't had my monthly supply of beef fat. One in particular has wonderful fried onion rings on the side.

I've never heard the quarking of the duckdog but I have eaten plenty of quarks in my day. My favorite flavor is lucky charm. Neutrinos also come in different flavors. Technicolor bosons taste just like a nothing burger.

Others are better. I have the others I've done: Steamboats and the Opening of the American West, Printing and the Reformation, the Second Korean War, and this one, Samuel Clemens: More Than Mark Twain.

I do not have degrees in History. I do not have a PhD; my MS is in Library and Information Science. There are too many people out there spewing "information." I don't want to join them. Besides, would you know what I meant if I called someone "k?okkinomallistic"? Clemens was a ?kokkinomallist and never once denied it.

Mike, you need to turn that talk into a YouTube video and put it out there for posterity. School children will discover it when they have to do reports on Mark Twain.

The monotone microwave beep bird may just be imitating an appliance. I have heard the local mockingbirds mimic car alarms. Seriously. They used to go off so frequently that the birds picked up the "call." Not so much lately because 1) car alarms work better and 2) more neighbors park their cars inside garages.

The monotone microwave beep bird may just be imitating an appliance. It sounds so inorganic. I don't think it is in love with the beep from my morning reheated coffee.

DC metro is being vastly improved after going 30 years with no maintenance. (a very American behavior} It is state of the art when compared to Boston or Chicago. If however the world's deepest longest escalator breaks down one gets to experience walking into a coal mine.

Hey, Don, my globe-trotting librarian daughter will be in DC for a few days this summer. We'll have to exchange some PMs about what she might expect. She says she loves traveling to cities with good rapid transit because she doesn't like to have to drive in them. I like that also.

Haw! Rap's hundred number post is no such thing! It's only a 99 number post!

Okay, it was a hundred number post, but that was before Acme deleted my errant and incomplete post. The one with unfinished sentences. The one where some mysterious sequence of keystrokes made Muddy think I had hit the "submit" button.

It's obvious to ME that you need to finish a sentence. Unfinished sentences hang out there, waiting like a wasp for a place to land, usually in your drink or in the salsa or on the nose someone you're talking with. Then you swat it and make a mess.

In the interest of safety, I shall graciously allow a choice of phrases to complete the sentence There are no :

A. jewels under this outhouse. B. smart cells in the brain of President ____________. (Your choice) C. reasons to go faster than 12 miles per hour. D. bullets in this gun. E. flies on Mom's children!

Pick one. There are no incorrect answers. You will be graded, and strip searched as you leave the testing room.

Consider this: We English-speaking humans use various gender-specific and gender-neutral terms to describe familial relationships. The two people who mated and produced us are our parents (gender-neutral) or our mother and father (gender-specific). We are their children (gender-neutral) or their sons and daughters (gender-specific). If our parents produced other offspring, they are our siblings (gender-neutral) or our brothers and sisters (gender-specific).

But if our parents have siblings, they are our aunts and uncles. There's no gender-neutral term to describe that relationship. And if our siblings have children, they are our nieces and nephews. Again, there's no gender-neutral term to describe the relationship.

But if our gender-specific aunts or uncles have children, they are only our gender-neutral cousins. We have to specify whether they're male or female.

Well, Mom, I'm working up the power point presentation for my thing on Sam Clemens on Saturday. Yes, that Sam Clemens. Your old custom...er, friend. You remember him: riverboat pilot and later you and he went West together to Nevada. He got into some sort of trouble there in Virginia City and fled to San Francisco and then went to the Sandwich Islands and then Back East. You told me once that you kinda lost track of him after that.

Ah Ha just as I suspected you are one of 'them' clever synthetes in which an enhanced reality includes strange abilities like sensing color by touch without looking or laughing prematurely before life's next surprise.